Ceramic Flower - Flower Lilac 3

I stared at the ceramic mum on my sister's kitchen wall, a lilac-colored thing roughly the size of my palm, and wondered if this was what Martha Stewart meant when she had her spiritual awakening in the home goods aisle. "It's wall decor," my sister explained, as if reading from a product description written by someone whose first language was enthusiasm. "Kitchen wall decor, to be specific. Wall art decor, if you're feeling fancy." The flower looked like something that had escaped from a 1950s powder room, decided to get a liberal arts degree, and ended up settling for a life of decorative servitude. Its petals, delicately crafted and glazed to a subtle sheen, reminded me of the time our mother tried to preserve actual mums in hairspray – a disaster that left our bathroom looking like a floral crime scene. But there was something endearing about this palm-sized botanical imposter. It hung there, neither pretentious nor apologetic, bringing a touch of spring to the wall above the coffee maker. In a world of mass-produced inspiration quotes and live-laugh-love plaques, this little lilac mum had somehow managed to make artificial feel authentic.